Amit Shah holds BJP strategy meet for 2019 poll

It’s the 2019 polls fever already in the air, which is keeping BJP busy. With less than two years time left to go for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, it seems BJP has already swung in full action to prepare itself for the elections and it has set itself a target of securing over 350 seats.

Party chief Amit Shah called for a strategy building meeting at the party headquarters on Thursday. The major focus lies on concentrating on 115-plus seats that the BJP has never won before. Sources to win these seats are spread across eastern, north-eastern and southern parts of the country which could help the party improve upon its 2014 tally of 282.

The focus of yesterday’s meeting was to give the charge of clusters of seats to ensure that they can be won in the next Lok Sabha election. This charge would be given to some Union ministers, who have earlier been party representatives, BJP general secretaries, organisational secretaries and a few others like Lok Sabha MP RK Singh. The new plan is to take into account that the party may lose about 50 to 60 seats that it won in 2014 and hence to make up for the impending loss, the back up plan is to target for at least 115 new seats.

A cluster of five seats each was delegated to law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad in Assam, health minister JP Nadda and telecom minister Manoj Sinha in West Bengal, petroleum minister Dharmendra Pradhan in Kerala, and power minister Piyush Goyal in Tamil Nadu. Apart from this cluster, other ministers who attended the meeting were commerce minister Nirmala Sitharaman, HRD minister Prakash Javdekar, minister of state for finance Arjunram Meghwal, to name a few.

Party general secretaries namely Ram Madhav, Bhupendra Yadav, Arun Singh and others have also been attached to specific seats to work alongside the Union ministers to ensure winning probability in the seats that have so far not worked in favour of the party. However, they have shown some inclination towards the party and can be made to favour if given the right push.

Internal surveys have indicated favourable results for the party in close to 300 seats. However, keeping up with the trend of Amit Shah’s working style, the target of 350 seats and the ongoing preparations looks commendable.